Have We Reached a Turning Point in the Climate Change Debate?
The past week has seen the climate change debate turn a corner. We had yet another blackout in South Australia along with blackouts in New South Wales and Queensland during the extreme heat waves over the past weekend. Australians are now suddenly not concerned about whether the Earth might be might be warming 1 or 2 degrees, they are more concerned about whether they are going to have reliable electricity.
Contrary to what primitive leftists would say reliable electricity is an essential in today’s modern world. We need electricity to see at night, communicate with people over distances, store our perishable foods, operate our manufacturing industries, power our construction tools, operate medical equipment, and the list goes on. It is unacceptable in a 21st century first world country for citizens to be unable depend on electricity-generating facilities operating around the clock.
As a result of these blackouts we have finally seen Coalition politicians finally jump off the climate change bandwagon and start talking about the importance of cheap, reliable power, namely coal. For the past decade in Australia it has been political blasphemy to not only question the science of climate change but to not support some form of government forced transition to currently expensive and unreliable renewable energy.
Even though the carbon tax was repealed in 2014 by the Abbott Coalition government it didn’t signal the end of high electricity costs in Australia. This was because it was still a bipartisan policy of having a mandated renewable energy target for Australia forcing businesses and consumers to have more of their power from renewable energy sources which is currently 20% by 2020. There are also still massive subsidies to the renewable energy funded through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
The left, media, Labor and Greens love pushing climate change alarmism for many reasons, first it gives them the appearance of helping to save the planet and is another form of virtue signalling. It is also an opportunity for those on the left who hate western civilization and capitalism to go about dismantling the industries we have built and also feeds into their belief that humanity has a negative impact on the world.
The end result of this climate change dogma has been for the poor citizens in Australia to see their household electricity prises constantly rising year after year. The rise of electricity prices has also impacted business and industry and has led to the continuing offshoring of our manufacturing operations which has contributed to our high unemployment rate especially amongst the youth. For a movement that is supposed to be about children’s future, climate change programs are doing a good job destroying our children’s economic future.
But as the lights are now starting to go out the public will no longer sit back and let politicians collude together to push for more renewable energy. Over the past week in parliament Coalition politicians have talked about building new coal fired power stations to satisfactorily meet energy demands. State Liberal parties have promised to roll back state Labor governments’ renewable energy targets. While they haven’t been promising to dismantle the climate change industry that both sides of politics have created this is still a welcome development.
Meanwhile Labor politicians are still clinging to the climate change faith claiming the blackouts had nothing to do with overreliance on renewables, with the South Australian Energy Minister claiming it is a problem with the national energy market’s operation. Though even under fire South Australian Labor Premier Jay Weatherill has conceded that maybe the state needs to look at a gas fired power station. Federal Labor is still standing by its 50% renewable energy target by 2030 although it has somewhat softened its rhetoric on it.
But the Coalition, with its new-found support of cheaper coal fired power, appearing to have the political advantage over Labor and Greens, we might be seeing the beginning of the end of climate change lunacy. Certainly, the dismantling of the climate change apparatus by President Donald Trump has shown that it is politically possible to push back against this new climate change religion. Maybe soon our economy and standard of living will no longer be sabotaged by these climate change vandals.